


The House by the Woods

by Innwich



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Crisis of Faith, Horror, Isolation, Loneliness, M/M, Night Terrors, Prayer, Priest Castiel, Writer Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 17:07:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2629604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Innwich/pseuds/Innwich
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean was a reclusive writer. He lived alone in a house near the woods, working on the final book of his series. Cas was the priest that hiked by the house and dropped in on Dean every day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The House by the Woods

_Dean lowered his gun. The bedroom was empty. “Clear.”_

_Sam answered from the kitchen. “All clear.”_

Dean stopped typing, and looked up from his laptop.

He thought he’d heard something, something that was not the wind whistling outside of the house. The house was silent, except for the sound of Dean’s breathing, and-

Yeah, there it went again. The squeaky floorboard by the coffee table in the living room.

A lamp thudded on the floor. Someone let out a high-pitched yelp.

Dean pulled off his glasses. “Friggin’ kids.”

The lights in the hallway weren’t switched on. In fact, the only light in the house was from the small lamp sitting on a corner of Dean’s desk in his bedroom. The rest of the house was in complete darkness. Dean had been hammering at his keyboard ever since he sat down in his chair this afternoon. He hadn’t even realized it was so late.

Dean crept out into the dark living room, avoiding the parts of the floor that creaked. A kid was standing with his back to Dean, shining a flashlight on the dusty fireplace and the heap of ash in it.

Dean tapped the kid on the shoulder.

The kid spun around, and shone the flashlight in Dean’s face. Dean squinted and said, “Boo.”

The kid let out a loud and long scream. He dropped his flashlight with a clatter and ran out of the house.

“Yeah, run back to your mom,” Dean shouted, “and stay out of my house!”

Dean picked up the flashlight that the kid had dropped. It barely weighed anything in his hand. It was a flashlight with a bright orange plastic casing, with a worn Batman sticker stuck on the side. The kid probably loved this thing. Dean could imagine it: The kid running on the long empty house to town with a pair of soaked pants, and too scared to get back his Batman flashlight. Dean chuckled. “What a wimp.”

Dean knew he had a reputation about being the weird reclusive guy that lived by the woods. The kids from town seemed to think it was funny to sneak into his house at nights. He didn’t know what exactly they were telling each other but him, but he was willing to bet it was something along the lines of him being a crazy hermit or a blood-sucking vampire.

He left the flashlight on his porch, because he didn’t want kids breaking into his house again.

Before going back into his house, he tried the rusty doorknob on the front door. He really needed to fix the lock, a few of the windows, and the leaking roof.

The house was falling to pieces.

\- - -

_Dean drove through the night; he knew the interstates like the back of his hand._

Dean had lived on the road his life. He’d slept in cheap motel beds and ate greasy diner foods for as long as he could remember.

Sam went to California and lived in a nice suburb with a fence and a yard and nosy neighbors.

Dean wanted to put down roots somewhere far away from the hustle and bustle of highways and back roads. He wanted somewhere quiet. So when he’d received his royalty checks, paid off his rent and bills, and found this little house on sale right by the woods, he’d snatched it up without a second thought.

The house wasn’t that remote. It was an hour’s walk away from the nearest farmhouse, and another forty minutes away from a city. Dean always drove anyway.

The first thing that Dean had done to the house was to put up bookshelves in his bedroom and spend an entire afternoon organizing his books.

A lot of stuff eventually migrated from the rest of the house to his room. He moved a floor-length lamp, a couch and the TV from the living room into his bedroom, since he never used the living room anywhere and no one ever came over here. He loved that he could watch Dr. Sexy from his bed, snuggled under the blankets on his memory foam bed on cold nights.

All that was left in the living room now were a coffee table, a loveseat, and some old framed photos on the mantelpiece.

It was amazing knowing he could do whatever he wanted to his house. It wasn’t like one of those motel rooms or tiny apartments that he grew up in. He didn’t have to worry about losing his deposits.

\- - -

_Zachariah’s henchmen died in bursts of white light. A dead angel fell facedown onto the floor, revealing the new party to the fight._

_It was Castiel._

Dean heard the three short knocks at the door, and immediately went to get the door. “Hey, Cas.”

“Hello, Dean,” Cas said, shifting the backpack strap on his shoulder.

Cas always looked like he’d just walked out of a church instead of the middle of nowhere. His black shirt and black pants were pressed, despite the hiking he did every day. His dog collar was stiff as a board. The only things that were out of place on Cas were his wrinkled trench coat and scuffed shoes.

“Do you want a drink?” Dean said, heading to the kitchen.

“Water, please,” Cas said.

“You’ve gotta live a little, Cas,” Dean said. “You ask for the same thing every time.”

“There is nothing wrong with having water,” Cas said.

Dean plucked a glass from the dish drying rack. He tried to turn the tap, and it refused to budge. “Friggin’ tap is stuck again.”

“Let me try,” Cas said. He turned the tap easily with a twist of his wrist.

Dean let the water ran for a while, before filling a glass. “Sorry. This house, man, it is falling apart.”

“It is getting worst,” Cas said, placing his backpack on the floor.

All he had were a Bible, an empty water bottle, and a few energy bars. He pulled out his Bible when he wasn’t trying to stare the weeds in Dean’s garden into submission or sitting by the window to watch the empty road.

“You have to bring more water with you,” Dean said, handing the glass of water to Cas. “I can’t always be here, Cas, and there is no one around for miles. I don’t want to find your dehydrated corpse on my porch one day.”

“I don’t have a larger water bottle,” Cas said, sipping at his water.

“Then buy some water at the shops.”

“It’ll be too heavy for me to carry,” Cas said, and that was the end of the matter.

Dean rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Don’t say I haven’t told you.”

\- - -

_“I'm having a hard time forgiving and forgetting here,” Dean said._

_“What can I do?” Sam said._

_“Honestly? Nothing.”_

That night, Dean tried to phone Sam again. No one picked up.

He was starting to wonder if Sam had changed his number without telling him.

Dean went to bed. There was a dip in the memory foam mattress, dent yield under him. He groaned happily, feeling the memory foam mattress molded against his back. He had this mattress for years. There was nothing better than curling in bed with a good book, with the television switched on so things wouldn’t get too quiet.

Dean had been through a rough time for a while.

He used to wake up in his bed, feeling he couldn’t move, sweating bullets, his heart pounding, and his chest aching like a bitch. He’d felt like he was pinned to his bed. He’d been too wired to fell asleep, but he’d been too paranoid to get out of bed.

It’d felt like he’d been stuck in a hole and couldn’t get out.

It wasn’t a good feeling to have when he lived in the middle of nowhere.

It’d messed with his head big time. He couldn’t sleep, but he couldn’t write, and he couldn’t get out of his house.

Sam would tell him he’d been writing too many horror stories, he’d been spending too much time writing about monsters and demons and blood, but those things had never bothered Dean.

It’d gotten better after Cas had started dropping by.

Dean didn’t know why it got better. Maybe it was something to do with knowing the priest that hiked past his house like clockwork every day. If he had an aneurysm and died, at least Cas would find his body before it rotted away in the summer day’s heat.

Dying alone without anyone knowing.

That was what he was afraid of.

After that, Dean made a point to call Sam every night, though Sam never picked up the phone.

\- - -

_“An amulet. It burns hot in God’s presence. It will help me find him,” Castiel said._

The flashlight was gone from his porch the next time Dean peeked out of his door to look for Cas.

Dean pulled off the piece of paper stuck to his door. Friggin’ kids were up to it again. One of these days he was gonna call the police and find out who was doing this.

“Dude, where are you?” Dean said, stepping out of the back door.

“I’m here,” Cas called from the garden. He was staring into the woods, but probably not imagining the sorts of monsters that hid in the cover of thick bushes like Dean loved to do.

Dean liked it here. At night, the forest was filled with the sounds of cicada singing in the trees. There was sometimes a flutter of wings as an owl flew by his windows and hunted for rats in his overgrown garden.

If he woke up early enough, he could hear birds chirping at the crack of dawn.

Dean had once seen a fawn staring at him from behind the garden fence, with white spots dotted on its tan coat. He could almost see his face reflected in its round dark eyes. It’d run off when he’d gotten too close and tried to close it. Sometimes, he could still hear it sometimes, bleating loudly and calling for its mother in the woods.

“Why do you come out here every day?” Dean said, sitting next to Cas in the grass.

The sun was bright. Cas had taken off his trench coat and left it lying on the ground, but he’d gotta be burning under his black clothes.

“I’ve told you, Dean. I have work to do,” Cas said.

“I don’t see much work to be done around here, Cas,” Dean said. “And I don’t think it’s my good looks that bring you out here.”

“You are very good-looking,” Cas said.

“Are you supposed to say that?” Dean said, grinning. Damn. The sun was heating up his face.

Cas frowned in puzzlement. “Why not? I’m only stating the obvious.”

“C’mon, spit it out. Why are you here?”

“Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do the good die and the evil thrive? Can you tell me, Dean?”

Dean shifted uncomfortably under Cas’s gaze. It didn’t seem right to have a priest looking to him for an answer. “Those are some heavy questions you have there.”

Cas lifted his lips into a small smile. “I’ve been told that I question too much.”

They watched the trees swaying in the wind. It was pretty awesome out here.

“So I guess you are out here finding yourself?” Dean said.

“I do have work, Dean. But I suppose I’m also finding God,” Cas said. “In my own way.”

\- - -

_War struggled under Sam’s weight. He screamed like a gutted pig as Sam sliced off his fingers._

_His ring shone dully in a growing pool of blood._

Dean’s series wasn’t an epic by any stretch of imagination. It was a series of books based on his and Sam’s childhood; it was about urban legends, blue-collars, road trips, a classic car, and two brothers. But people liked it enough to keep the royalty checks coming, and Dean was allowed to keep writing.

But if Dean had any say in it, this was going to be his final book.

He wasn’t going to end up with the next greatest American novel of all time, but he poured his heart into his work, and he was proud of it. It was a story that he’d started writing for Sam.

Sam had been a weird kid. He had been one of those kids that wanted to hear scary stories but then stayed up all night after hearing one. Dean had been only too happy to scare his little brother shitless, and he’d laughed at the dark circles under Sam’s eyes the next morning. 

His stories hadn’t been exactly kid-friendly. There had been a lot of blood and bones and fangs and decapitated heads in them, but Sam had kept coming back for more and asking Dean to tell him scary bedtime stories every night.

So Dean had started telling him the adventures of two brothers, who were also called Sam and Dean.

It had been more interesting than the stories of a couple of latch key kids that had a dad that was never around. It had been better to imagine they were living on the road because they were hunting for mysterious monsters, and not because their drunken old man couldn’t hold down a job in any one town for long.

\- - -

_Castiel glared at the Trickster. ”Hello, Gabriel.”_

Dean didn’t know how this got started.

He’d been working on his book when he’d heard a knock on the door and found Cas standing at his door like someone that had been lost in the desert for days. The guy had had overly bright eyes and lips so parched that it had been kind of painful just to look at them. The first words Cas had spoken to him were “I didn’t realize it was so far out here.” 

Then it became a daily routine for Cas to come to his door and Dean letting him into the house and kitchen and garden. Hell, it was the highlight of Dean’s days. He hated it when Cas picked up his back pack and declared he had to hike back to town. And Cas never once tried to talk to him about the Lord, Jesus Christ, or whatever it was that priests talked about.

It was a sunny day, but a cool breeze had picked up in the garden. Cas kept his trench coat on while he was watching a squirrel darted across the garden.

“Don’t you have a parish to go back to?” Dean said.

“I don’t have a parish,” Cas said.

“Why the hell not?”

“I’m unfit to lead a parish.” Cas shrugged. It was an awkward roll of his shoulders; it was like Cas wasn’t used to shrugging. “I have doubts.”

“Careful, Cas. Last I heard, that isn’t the party line,” Dean said.

“It is an unpopular opinion,” Cas agreed. “But I don’t believe any man has a right answer about God or life.”

Cas had placed his hands neatly in his lap, like a proper Christian schoolboy that he’d probably been.

Dean could reach over and hold his hands. He betted Cas had dry warm hands.

“Well, if they don’t want you, you can stay here with me anytime,” Dean said.

Cas smiled. The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Thank you, Dean.”

\- - -

_Sam rode shotgun. Dean started the engine, and turned up the music._

_It was a good day._

Dean tried to call Sam again.

He read over the chapter he’d finished while holding the phone to his ear. He hadn’t been expecting an answer. He nearly dropped the phone when the dial tone ended and someone picked up the call.

“Hello?” Dean said.

No one spoke, but the sound of heavy breathing was coming from the other end of the line.

“Sammy, is that you?” Dean said.

The call was ended abruptly.

Dean redialed, but no one answered.

Despite spending most of his life living on the road, Dean was never really good at being alone. He had had Sam, who had hung off his arm like a damn clingy monkey.

Dean was used to having Sam with him, the two of them working on their homework in a motel room.

He’d felt like he’d lost something after Sam had gone to college.

He’d gone on the road. He’d taken up odd jobs here and there, but it’d never been the same.

He didn’t like being alone as much as he thought he did.

“Cas?”

Dean looked out of the window, and saw Cas sitting on a patch of overgrown weed in the garden, tilting his face up to feel the sunlight on his skin. Dean had to chuckle.

He felt like he was with Sam again.

He felt almost content.

The rest of the world could screw themselves and he wouldn’t care.

\- - -

_Castiel slammed down his shot glass. “I think I'm starting to feel something.”_

Dean set down the glass of water on the kitchen table in front of Cas. Cas was sitting at the table and pulling out a Bible from his bag. The pages were yellowish and dog-eared and ready to crumble to dust.

Only Cas would think lugging around a Bible was more important than an extra water bottle.

“You should write, Dean. You don’t have to entertain me,” Cas said.

“Dude, you sound like my publisher,” Dean said, sitting across from Cas. “Do you even know what I write?”

Cas rubbed the back of his neck, and he actually looked embarrassed. “No, I, uh, I’ve never read your books.”

“You aren’t missing out on much,” Dean said,

“I’m sure your books are very good. I never had the occasion,” Cas said. “I don’t have time for books.”

“Are you kidding me?” Dean said.

“Dude, you don’t need an occasion. To sit down with a good book,” Dean said. He cut off Cas’s protests, “And I don’t mean the Bible. You must have memorized it by now.”

“That’s an exaggeration. I’ve merely memorized parts of the New Testament,” Cas said.

“That was what I said,” Dean said. “You’ve got to read something else, man.”

“I shouldn’t keep you from your work,” Cas said.

“C’mon, my job is to get people to crack a book once in a while. And that includes you,” Dean said.

Cas sighed, and closed his Bible. “What should I read?”

“Lucky for you, I’m a writer. I know what I’m doing.” Dean grinned. “Let’s get you started on the good stuff.”

Dean pulled out _Slaughterhouse Five_ from between two trashy romance novels. He was a writer, not a damn librarian. He could put his books wherever he wanted on the bookshelves.

Cas finished the book quicker than Dean expected. By the time Dean checked up on Cas in the kitchen, Cas was frowning behind a book that had a shirtless Fabio on the cover.

“I don’t think sex is supposed to work like this,” Cas said.

“Yeah?” Dean grinned. “What do you know about sex?”

“I know enough about sex,” Cas said, affronted.

Dean laughed. “What? You learnt it from sex ed class in high school?”

Cas kept his gaze trained on the pages.

“No way. Did you at least watch porn?”

Cas refused to talk to him for the rest of the day.

\- - -

_Castiel sliced off Pestilence’s finger and took his ring._

Cas left his empty glass on the kitchen table. Dean rinsed it and put it away in the empty dish drying rack.

Dean had never thought it would be possible to be friends with someone without knowing a single thing about them.

Dean didn’t know anything about Cas. Hell, he didn’t even know his last name.

But that was one of the perks of being a writer. Dean could let his imagination ran wild and gave Cas any backstory he wanted. Cas was a priest that was on a run from corrupt Vatican officials. He could be a priest that was secretly a closet case. Or a priest that was holding the answers to the age-old question of where the Holy Grail was.

Cas never asked Dean anything about Dean himself. All he asked was a glass of water, and he would read his Bible or talked about a rabbit that he saw on the hill or in a field or about the birds that had hatched.

They were perfect strangers. It shouldn’t feel so normal to invite a guy in everyday and talk about loaded topics like religion and philosophy.

If he were Cas, he would want some friggin’ pie first.

\- - -

_Dean arranged the four rings to form the key to Lucifer’s cage._

“Dean.”

“Dammit, Cas.” Dean startled awake to see Cas standing over him in his bedroom. He must have fallen asleep on his couch. “How did you get in here?”

“The lock on your door is broken,” Cas said. “You know that.”

Dean got to his feet and rubbed his eyes. “You should have waited for me. This is creepy.”

Cas trailed after him as he went to pick up his laptop from the kitchen table. “I was worried when you didn’t answer the door.”

Dean rubbed at his chest. It ached sometimes. He could almost feel the muscles in his heart clenching.

He hoped it was not the burgers clotting up his arteries catching up to him now. There was no hospital within ten miles, and he’d die if he had a heart attack. He didn’t want Cas to find his cold, dead body someday when he looked for Dean and Dean wasn’t there to answer the door.

Dean opened his laptop, and reread where he’d left off last night. It was something about Book Dean finally having the key to Lucifer’s cage.

He was actually nearing the end of his story.

“You know, Cas, I think I’m finally finishing the book,” Dean said.

“Oh,” Cas said.

“You could be a little more enthusiastic,” Dean said, arching an eyebrow at him.

“You’ll be free of your burden after you finish your book,” Cas said, and that was an odd ring to his voice. “I’m very happy for you.”

Somehow Dean didn’t think he meant it, and it troubled Dean more than he would like to admit.

\- - -

_They made their own choice. They chose family. And, well... isn't that kinda the whole point?_

It was a Thursday afternoon when Dean typed ‘The End’ into his laptop.

Dean sat in his chair for a long moment, feeling like he’d just run a marathon even though he’d been doing nothing but sat on his ass for the entire morning. The hollowness would set in a few days later, and he would itch and pull out a map and hop into the Impala and drove forever to see how far he could go before he dropped. But for now, he could sit here and bask in the glory of warm contentment like he’d eaten an entire apple pie.

“You look happy.”

Dean watched Cas wander back into the house through the back door. “You won’t believe this.”

“What?” Cas said.

“I’ve finished my book.” Dean grinned. “Is it awesome or what”

Cas stared. There was no other word for it. He was holding his glass of water, but he wasn’t drinking it and putting it down on the table. It was like he was frozen in mid-action.

“Cas? Say something. You’re kinda scaring me,” Dean said.

Cas blinked, and put down his water. “Sam will be glad to hear that.”

It was Dean’s turn to stare. A feeling of unease crept over him. “Did you say Sam?”

Cas nodded without batting an eye. He was serene and calm. He didn’t look like he’d just dropped a bombshell on Dean. He didn’t look like he’d given himself away like one of killers in a pulp magazine where everyone wore fedoras and big coats and had a deadly dame waiting to stab them in their backs.

“How do you know about Sam?” Dean said slowly, feeling cold fury under his skin.

Cas tensed. He didn’t answer straight away. His shoulders were a rigid line of muscles. He watched Dean with hunted eyes. “You told me about Sam.”

“I didn’t. I don’t know a thing about you, and I sure as hell never told you about my family,” Dean said. “Don’t lie to me.”

Cas shivered despite his trench coat and the hot summer day. Dean didn’t know his cold fury could be infectious, but he suddenly realized he was seeing Cas’s breath. “Dean, you have to calm down.”

“What is happening?”

“Listen to me. You have to calm down,” Cas said. His deep voice cut though Dean’s hysteria. “You’re dead. But you can control it.”

“I’m not listening to this,” Dean said. “You’re crazy, Cas.”

“When was the last time you’ve eaten?” Cas said.

“I lost track of time.”

“There’s no food in your pantry or fridge, Dean.”

“I run out of food. It happens all the time,” Dean tried to argue. But he remembered the empty sink and the dish drying rack that only ever held the glass that Cas used.

“Dean, look at yourself. Look around you.”

Dean looked, and he saw the run-down house with its peeling and yellowing wallpapers, dusty floors, and cobwebs hanging at the corners of the walls. His house was falling apart at the seams. He’d always known he should fix up his house. It wasn’t weird.

Was it?

Dean groaned in pain as his chest ached again. He clutched at his chest. When he pulled away his hand, he could see flakes of dried black blood on his palm. “What happened?”

“An armed burglar,” Cas said. “I’m sorry.”

“Shit,” Dean said. He could imagine it: The loud noises of a window shattering, a gruff voice, footsteps, and Dean grabbing the shotgun by his bed before walking out of his bedroom to make the man leave.

“You can move on now that your work is finished,” Cas said quietly.

“Did Sam tell you to exorcise me?”

“Not an exorcism. He wants you to find peace and rest,” Cas said. “I’m only trying to help.”

“Yeah, because you’re all about saving people, aren’t you?”

“I try,” Cas said, and Dean couldn’t detect a note of irony in it. Cas picked up his backpack, and walked to the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Dean.”

Dean didn’t move, not until he heard the door closed behind Cas. 

\- - -

_Sam stood outside a house. Through the windows, he could see Dean laughing at the dinner table with Lisa and Ben. Dean was living the life he’d never got._

_Dean was happy._

_Sam walked away. He would keep hunting, keep living the life that he knew._

Dean sat in front of his laptop, and wrote the epilogue of his book.

He knew he could never give a satisfactory explanation for Sam’s return from Hell, but Dean would never leave his brother in Hell.

Something was missing. Dean hesitated, before he kept typing:

_Unbeknownst to Sam, Castiel was standing next to him on the street, invisible to human eyes. Castiel took one last look at Dean, before he, too, followed Sam’s example and left Dean to his apple-pie life._

_It was a good end to a good hunt._

_It was what Dean wanted._

“Dean?” Cas said from the front door.

“I’m in the bedroom,” Dean said.

Hunched in his trench coat, Cas stood uncertainly at the door of the bedroom.

Dean slid his hand across the keyboard of his laptop. He closed the lid, and it felt like the end of something. The end of his work, the end of the years he’d spent working on his series. “Can you do something for me?”

“Anything you wish, Dean.”

“Will you give this to Sam?” Dean said.

“I’ll hand it to him personally,” Cas said.

“And tell him-” It felt weird saying this to Cas, but Dean had to force out the words. He wasn’t gonna get another shot at this. “Tell him I’m proud of him, okay?”

“I will tell him that,” Cas said solemnly. He placed the laptop carefully in his backpack.

“I’m scared, Cas,” Dean said.

“I can read you a prayer,” Cas said. “Some of the deceased find it soothing.”

“That’s because you have a nice voice,” Dean said.

“It’s kind of you to say that.”

“I’m just saying it as it is.”

Cas smiled. “Lie down and make yourself comfortable. It’ll ease the transition.”

Dean lay down on his bed. He looked over to where Cas was drawing the curtains. “Can I tell you something?”

“Of course.”

“I hate the way I died. I was a simple guy with a simple life, Cas. I shouldn’t have to have died with guns blazing,” Dean said quietly. “I always wanted to pass away in my sleep.”

“You will, Dean,” Cas said. “You’ll go peacefully this time.”

Dean could see the cracks in the ceiling. The old dent in the memory foam mattress still held his shape, even though he was now no more than a shadow of himself. Cas turned down the lights in the room, save for the dim lamp on the bedside table. Dean had read books under this lamp on many lonely nights.

It was never bright enough to keep him from falling asleep in the middle of a book.

Dean closed his eyes.

Cas sat by the bed, and started to say, “Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you once again…”

\- - -

_But then again... nothing ever really ends, does it?_


End file.
